The first time I drove a car I was 11 years old. One of my older brothers wanted to run in the country to aid his training to play football. He thought it would be boring to run down a dirt road and back, so he invited me to drive his car a mile down the road and wait for him.

I still remember driving that car, a stick shift, half a century later. Why? It was a first-time experience, with elements of challenge.

The first (and only) time I gave a sermon in church (a liberal church), I started: “Buy the farm, cash in your chips, go to your reward [I went on and on]. These are some of the ways people describe death. There are so many such expressions — we must find death quite important. What do you think will happen to you when you die?”

Decades later I still remember standing at the front of the church and listening as person after person responded. The experience was unique and loaded with emotion for me — who asks churchgoers questions during a sermon? Questions about death? The suspense of how the churchgoers I would respond cemented the experience in my mind.

I don’t remember some first experiences — those from my early childhood have been lost to childhood amnesia.

Young adulthood is a time of many emotion-laden firsts that we long-remember because we make one important change after another relating to relationships, work. living arrangements, and so on.

My first important work was writing an appellate brief trying to prevent a murder conviction from being overturned on appeal and the murderer set free.  I now realise that I (a law student at the time) was assigned the work because the cause was hopeless. The police had questioned the 17-year-old killer without a parent being present. That was not allowed in Colorado at that time. The confession and information leading to the stolen wallet that resulted from the questioning had to be suppressed, with no evidence of guilt remaining.  I tried hard, but the appellate court ruled against us several months later, and the boy went free. My accomplishment: I helped keep the killer behind bars for several months until the court issued its opinion. 

I remember working on that case long ago because of the drama involved. And because it was the first work I ever did that had potential for mattering.

If you think about the firsts in your life, you will recall events that led to high emotion in you. I hope most of the memories are good ones – first kiss, first love.  If not, keep in mind that you can always create new firsts to remember.